Financial Institutions have established various processes and associations related to the exchange of documents evidencing monetary transactions. Some types of financial documents have been historically encoded with magnetic ink so that information from the documents can be read by machine. Such documents have thus become known as magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) documents. Historically, these documents have been at least theoretically presented for payment by delivery of physical paper. However, many types of payments and transactions are no longer enabled by paper. Additionally, reconciliation and error recovery based on paper documents is subject to numerous exceptions as a result of paper handling and due to late delivery of documents. Thus, legislation has been promulgated which allows banks to completely eliminate paper documents and accomplish presentment and other processes using electronic images of checks and other documents.
In the United States for example, this legislation is referred to as “The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act” or simply “Check 21” and authorizes the use of electronic records for presentment from one bank to another as long as the images in the electronic records accurately represent any original paper documents. Similar legislation may exist in other countries. Prior to legislation such as Check 21, when images of checks or other financial documents were used by financial institutions primarily to supply records to customers, or for archival purposes, the presence of image quality and/or usability problems had no serious ramifications for the check clearing process. However, with legislation such as Check 21 the use of large numbers of images in place of paper checks for presentment and clearing throughout the banking system demands that there be an efficient way to monitor image quality and/or usability. This need can be especially acute where large numbers of images may be stored, sent, and received at remote locations, possibly by clearing agents or contractors as opposed to the banks themselves.